Businesses and individuals rely on legally executed documents in a variety of contexts, from completion of complex forms used by governments and institutions (e.g., insurance forms, car loan and purchase forms, and the like), to simple contracts between individuals (e.g., lease agreements, wills, and a host of miscellaneous arrangements), with a range of contracts in between.
Documents signed by overnight envelope take a minimum of one day to reach the recipient and an additional day to be returned. Due to intra-office distribution delays and recipients' tendency to put paper documents in to-do piles, the average cycle time using overnight envelopes is 5-7 days. Documents signed by fax have an average cycle time of 2-3 days, due to intra-office delays, procrastination of paper document tasks, and fax machine mishaps. Faced with the burden of signing a paper document and returning it by fax, scan, or mail, many recipients put it down on their desk and forget about it.
As a result, users are increasingly turning to exchanging executed documents online. These documents not only include a field for including a signature, such as the type described above, but may be more complex to include additional fields that may require the signer to initial, sign, or take some other action. However, in a large document, signers may easily lose track of how many such fields they are required to complete (i.e., sign, initial, fill with data), and how many they already have completed. Thus, when users of an online document exchange program encounter problems, such as a signer not completing a document, or a signer not understanding what actions are required, they turn to customer support. This not only slows down the completion progress of a signing event, but also increases the load on customer support.
For such complex electronic documents, signer users typically are provided with limited guidance. The signer user is expected to use general navigation techniques, such as scrollbars, arrow keys, tab buttons, and the like, to move from one information field to the next. More particularly, and in the present contexts, entry of data into information fields is hindered by the use of small screens on many devices. For example, laptop and sub-laptop computers may have screens of 11 inches (about 28 cm) diagonally measured), popularly-priced tablet computers may have screens of 7 inches (about 18 cm) or less, and, although some smart phones are being made with screens of up to about 6.4 inches (about 16 cm), many popular smart phone screens measure only 5 inches (12.7 cm) or less.
When a data entry field small enough to be seen in the context of a document is selected on such small screens and data is typed in or graphical information (such as a handwritten signature) is entered, the user may be frustrated. For example, the number of keystrokes, mouse clicks, and/or multi-finger gestures required to zoom into the field, enter data, and then zoom out so that the document can be read again may become annoying. Yet if the person who is entering this data fails to enlarge the field enough, he or she may not be able to see errors being made while typing data. Additionally, signatures or other graphic data may not be digitized accurately enough to be identifiable. Also, if a person's figure or stylus slips outside the field limits, unintended results may occur, including the termination of data entry.
Thus, there remains a need for apparatus and methods to facilitate completion of electronic documents with form fields.
The foregoing summary, as well as the following detailed description of certain embodiments of the present invention, will be better understood when read in conjunction with the appended drawings. To the extent that the figures illustrate diagrams of the functional blocks of various embodiments, the functional blocks are not necessarily indicative of the division between hardware circuitry.